33 days, 13 hours, 6 minutes, 41 seconds
This all sort of started as a reply to Blindingly Articulate’s comment, but it got a bit long. And I wasn’t sure if she’d ever see it if I reply commented.
* * *
GUESS WHAT ELSE? THAT I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW ON FRIDAY?
NaNoWriMo has a secondary program (the Young Writer’s Program? I don’t know if you’ve heard about it yet or seen it or what, but the site is drop-dead awesome this year. They’ve put loads of work into it.)
But basically, they’re doing pep-talks too. Which they’ve never done before.
So what is even more awesome than Jonathan Stroud’s pep-talk, is the one by MARKUS BLOODY ZUZAK which is through that program. That our homeschool (composed of me and two younger sibs) will be recieving a pep-talk from.
I’m afraid that nothing really gets more awesome than that. To me, anyway.
Plus, you can read Neil Gaiman’s talk on the NaNo site. Here.
And I would totally write a fan letter with you. Jonathan Stroud is awesome beyond belief.
But no, I don’t have a plot yet. When I’m done tormenting MC, I’ll start plotting. I’ve even printed out a NaNo workbook which is too lovely to not do, so it will completely get done. You can find them here. Even though they are on the YWP site, there’s one for High School and it’s useful and cool. Especially since they’ve changed it from NaNo being 13+ to 18+. Meaning that if you’re under 18 you can still do YWP. Except that I’m still doing the real NaNo because I did it last year, so I can do it again. I hope.
And I’ll get you a NaNo shirt if you finish. How’s that for incentive?
~DreamingOfNaNo
wawawawawawawa pop
YAY!!! The site’s up!!!
WriMoRadio’s starting again too, which makes me so, so happy! (It is simply awesome. You have no idea.)
So I’m listening to my NaNoNovel’s future in the NaNoSupercollider and trying very, very hard not to type the word ’squee’ because it makes me feel way, way too fangirly. And even though there is nothing wrong with fangirling NaNoWriMo, it still makes me feel lame to say stuff like that.
Anyway, I’m excited. Though I must go back to my own personal StoWriWe (story writing week – yeah, it’s geeky. Ignore me) and the new website is beautiful. Even though it’s not as beautiful as the YWP site, I still love it.
And I love NaNo. And my shirt. And my book, which is signed by Chris Baty!
Okay. *Squee* This is all too made of win.
*Cringe*
~DreamingOfNothing
*A Little Later* I’ve been checking out the site, and I found who’s doing the pep-talks!!!
*Shriek* Even though we have people who were my childhood writing idols (Brian Jacques, Katherine Paterson, Philip Pullman) I didn’t think that it could beat Neil Gaiman, who did a pep-talk last year. But that was before I got to the bottom of the page and saw
JONATHAN STROUD!!! THE CREATOR OF THE BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY!!!
BlindinglyArticulate, scream with me. Now. Especially since your username is inspired by this guy.
(For those of you who don’t know, pep talks are when authors write emails to you basically saying, “Keep going, you crazy idiots, and no way in hell I’d ever attempt what you’re doing.” And in essence, cheer you on. They’re kinda what kept me through to the end last year, Neil Gaiman telling me to keep going.)
If I was squeeing before, you had better believe that I can’t even hear Secondhand Serenade (my new obsessive band) over my shrieking now.
Oh. My. Gosh. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.
Vas Is Das?
Yes, I’m posting on time. Thou can faint now.
I’m home sick, because of the whole barfing-at-four-in-the-morning-thing, but it’s not that bad. I’ve never liked throwing up, but I’ve been able to keep down the Pasta Fresca of lunch, and it got me out of school, so it’s not as bad as if I actually felt that miserable. Just a bit miserable, but compared to last night when I couldn’t find Mayhem and the entire fandom had seen it and was discussing it animatedly and even my depression music wouldn’t play because YouTube was down…. *Sobs*
It worked out, though. I found an Evil!Illegal!Website that seems to put them up as soon as they air, and so even though SurfTheChannel (my normal site) appears to be shutting down in less than a week, it’s okay. And Mayhem was amazing, so it all worked out anyway.
And I didn’t have nightmares. That I can remember. Which makes me happy.
So I’m at home, copying most of the scarce genfic for Criminal Minds off onto my computer for internet-less reading and muttering random quotations to myself under my breath. Yes, yes, I know that I really should be putting the last 1,000 words on Up All Night, seeing as it’s due in less than five days, but I’m not listening. Not listening, I tell you! I put 1,000 on it last night, in between distraught hair-pulling, so I’m a bit MainCharacter-ed out. I really don’t like my main character. This entire experience is sort of like a sped-up version of NaNoWriMo, except without the buzz of excitement getting you to the end.
Yesterday afternoon I was so excited (because I mentioned excitement, and because I distract myself at the drop of a hat – no, I didn’t hear what you just said, Stupid Voice In The Back Of My Head, Which Is Starting To Make Me Fear Schizophrenia, Even Though Schizophrenia Results In An Altered View Of Reality And Not Just Annoying Voices, but I digress again) because of the day I’d been counting down to since the end of July and Mayhem, of course, and my family was like, “What are you smoking?” Except that they didn’t actually say that. Whatever. And I couldn’t tell them why I was so excited and kept using the word Mayhem in random sentences (my brother asked me How I Was This Morning, and I replied, “It’s a lovely day for a bit of Mayhem, isn’t it?” Luckily, he’s used to it) because they’re not supposed to know about Criminal Minds! I feel like an undercover cop.
Anyway, for a person who’s supposedly written out, I seem to have a lot to say. I have other impending things to do, however (“Don’t you have something better to do?” – “Other than annoy you for three hours? Hell no.” — Shut up, Stupid Voice. I mean it) so I’ll leave you to shake your heads and mutter, “Yes, she’s a sad case.”
She is. And proud of it. Even if it means that she’ll be sneaking the phrase, “Okay, that’s not too obscure,” into every sentence she says until further notice.
And even if it means that she shivers with excitement every time she sees the words Minimal or Loss because both of them equal Tobias-wannabes and Reid-terror and an ep that hasn’t even aired but she’s already writing fanfic for.
Ignore the preposition.
~DreamingOfNor-mal-i-ty, not Normalcy
Mayhem
Well. Wow. I’m going to have to make this short, because it’s late, but I wanted to convey one thing.
I’m shaking. That was incredible. I mean, it’s the only season premiere of anything I’ve ever watched when it actually aired (though it was several hours after, as I scoured the internet for it – finally found some horribly pixelated version somewhere, but it was Mayhem. The quality didn’t really matter for me, at that point – I was too pumped) but I still… It was so action-packed. More than really any one I’d ever seen. And it got some cool doctor action (as well as one of my favorite character’s being World’s Worst Patient Ever).
***Spoilers to follow. If you actually intend to watch Mayhem, Episode 1 of Season 4 of Criminal Minds, then don’t read this. I read spoilers before the thing came out and watched the promos and listened to the radio ads (buckle up. It’s going to be a killer ride) and even though all that stuff kinda flies out the window when you’re watching it, still. Don’t ruin it for yourself.***
Anyway – it was awesome. While I’m mad at Bomb-Making!Unsub, both for making the bomb that could have blown up Morgan and for slitting his throat in front of the whole team (yeah, put them all back into nightmares, why dontcha), he was still pretty good. At being evil, I mean.
And Morgan made me want to cry, because he was so brave and so stupid and so unwilling to trust anyone still that he drove a bomb-filled ambulance out of New York. Sirens on and Garcia shouting at him to stop because she could only keep the cell towers down for so long.
But he lived. Thank God.
One thing, though – they never really said what was going on with the terrorists. So their point was to bring federal agents, so they could almost blow them up but not kill them – just hurt them enough to need an ambulance, so they could get it through the bypass on the nearest hospital, so they could blow up said hospital and SuperImportantUnnamedDude within? That’s a little weird.
It was still bloody dramatic. I’m still shaking. Breathe, DreamingOfNothing, breathe.
Hotch was also great, and I can’t say I’m too upset about his girlfriend-ish dying, because I don’t want him to marry again. I don’t want Haley to happen again. (Plus, what I realized after I posted about Haley is that she’s also sick of being frightened that someday someone will come and tell her that Jack’s Daddy isn’t coming home. His job is stressful and he could potentially die every day. Haley doesn’t know that Thomas Gibson has another year contract.) And, despite Joyner’s british accent, I didn’t really like her. So I wasn’t too heartbroken that she bit the dust.
Though Hotch’s upsetness made me sad. 
I like Hotch.
***Spoilers end here. You can uncover your ears now.***
Anyway, it’s late and I’ve got school tomorrow (ugh). G’night and sleep tight, though if I don’t have nightmares I’ll be shocked.
~NightmaringOfMayhem
Voldoende. Sir.
Tomorrow night. Since it’s now the 101st post, I feel completely okey-dokey with returning to CM madness. Especially since I just finished one of the best eps I’ve ever seen.
(Yes, I did say that last time. And the time before. Hush.)
But Lo-Fi really, really was good. And it got me very emotionally involved, which is challenging for anything. And, for one of the few times in history, something fictional nearly got tears out of me. (Then again, it’s probably the lack of sleep. Lessons Learned blurred my eyes near the end too, so it’s probably just increased emotion due to lateness. Right.)
And the awesome ep I just finished was Lessons Learned, not Lo-Fi. I wanted to blog about it right after I saw it on the 18th, but I didn’t want the 100th post to be about that. And then Baby Max helped me out with that, and it all worked out well.
Well, the next 100 posts can be CM raving. Good enough.
One thing that struck me about Lo-Fi – it had terrorists. Which doesn’t seem too weird, especially seeing as that’s something the BAU’s seen a few times, but Numb3rs’s season finale had terrorists too. Except that that was one big gigantic political message, because the terrorists weren’t Islamic like the Numb3rs team and CIA counter-terrorism dude thought they were, they were Irish. Which sucked, because the Irish people had awesome accents.
But we don’t know anything for sure about the terrorists in Lo-Fi, except that they’re organized, bloody scary, and that they’re in New York. I think they’re probably Middle Eastern, partially because they use the weapons of Mossad and have that color of skin – at least from what I can gather from freezing the screen when they take out their guns.
It couldn’t be Israel, firstly because why would Israel want to attack America, and secondly because CBS isn’t stupid enough to do something completely false about a country that the US is working with in the war. CBS would be shot to hell if they pulled something like that, so I don’t think they will.
Lessons Learned had Al-Qaeda-ish psychos, so I don’t think that CBS is worried about doing that again. Even though moronic Numb3rs is, grumble grumble.
Anyway, I’m excited. And I saw Reid’s mom!
I’ll explain. Basically, I’ve been remembering this with a small smile since Saturday Night, but I can’t tell my family for understandable reasons and none of the other friends that I’ve been able to talk to care one iota. So I’ll tell you, Still Trying to Dream and the people (person) who read(s) you. I’ll tell you, because you always seem to care, awesome peanut that you are.
So at my friend’s birthday party, we were going to watch Another Cinderella Story, which is just about as dumb as it sounds. Even though it had Eunice from She’s The Man, (which means, though I only just realized it, I have degrees from CM to AD! *Happy dance*) it still wasn’t all that good.
Anyway, so the main character is being shouted at my her stepmother in the first scene, and I think, “I think I’ve seen you before, Stepmother.” And then MainCharacter(Cinderella) goes and fights with Stepsisters Eunice and someone else, and when she goes back to the stepmother I’m like, “It’s Mrs. Reid!”
It was really, really cool at the time. And she didn’t act anything like she did as Diana Reid. Jane Lynch is officially an awesome actress now.
So no one cared, but I’ve been getting more and more into the degrees thing – you know, like Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Except with whoever you want. I’ve connected CM to Spiderman 3 (the Russian landlord was on Honor Among Thieves – he was an unsub, actually), to RV (Reid’s actor played in it), to The Princess Bride (Gideon’s actor was Inigo Montoya), to Daddy Day Care (Elle Fanning, the cutie, was in both), to Numb3rs (through Alex Trowbridge/Jill Morris, Inconvientent_School_Teacher/Desiree Morgan, and Unknown_Guy_From_Numb3rs-2008-Premiere-Promos/SuperEvil!Frank) and now Another Cinderella Story, in one degree.
As you can see, I’m pretty obsessed and not doing anything else with my life. Which isn’t a good thing, but it’s what’s happening. If I fail high school because of you, Criminal Minds, I’ll kill you. You’re too darn addictive.
I’ll just give a quick book update and then go to bed.
I’ve finished Identical, which was incredible, especially the end. It’s written in poetry, so it’s a bit more intense than it would be, and I loved it. I’ve got the rest of Ellen Hopkin’s books on hold. I give this book a PG-13 to R rating, though, so keep that in mind.
I’ve also finished Forever Changes, about a mathematical genius girl with Cystic Fibrosis who doesn’t know if she’ll make it to college. It’s a great book, seemingly written exactly for a geeky person like me, with references to things like Lord of the Flies and a character whose picture the dictionary uses for nerd but is so, so endearing and a teacher who says things like, “therefore, Zora appears to have proven that you can never reach the cafeteria from here, which is undoubtedly news to your classmates who are now standing amid the aromas of Tater Tots.”
So now I’m reading A Conspiracy of Paper, which is a book that’s written like a classic but way more riveting.
G’night. I’m listening to Faded, a new song by Cascada. It’s actually starting to get on my nerves.
~DreamingOfNothing
Well, that’ll about do it
It’s my 100th post!
I’ve been thinking all day about what I should write about. I wanted my 100th post to be special, you know? My ADD mind skipped from friends to books to Spencer Reid, but I wanted it to be special and timeless and something that, how many years from now, I’d look back on and not say, “Ah, I was so quaint back then.” (Which is sort of what I say now when I look at what I wrote in my various journals of the past.)
But now, as I listen to the shrieks of, “We have a baby! We have a baby!” that I know what I want to talk about.
Basically, a good friend of mine (who I’m actually staying with right now) has a sister who’s just had a baby. As you may have gathered from my earlier paragraph, she’s incredibly excited. It’s wonderful, and beautiful, and it makes me happy to be in the middle of this.
So I guess that’s what this post is going to be about. Happiness and life and joy. Because so many posts have been about depressing things, and I suppose that I just want some happiness in here somewhere. Some love.
Because really, that’s what’s important. The people who love you. And they may or may not have the same genes as you, but that doesn’t stop them from being your family. In my mind, actually, family is solely made up of those you love and who love you. But since this seems to be leading me in a pretty serious and pensive direction, and since I don’t want darkness tainting this post or this day (feel free to roll thine eyes, BlindinglyArticulate. I probably would if I wasn’t the way I am at the moment) I will just direct it to the baby. And said baby’s wonderful, happy family who’s still screaming, an hour after finding out.
Happy Birthday, Baby Max. Your aunt already loves you more than you’ll ever understand, especially not right now while you’re getting used to breathing and being in this crazy place called Earth. I wish you luck.
~DreamingOfSomething
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Hi. Title’s from a book I just finished, which was actually pretty good. About China. It had a pretty cool cover picture too. I would tell you who wrote it, but I returned it to the library not two hours ago, so… I can’t.
On more important matters, it’s less than a week before The Premiere (if you’ve been reading this at all you know which one I’m talking about, so don’t ask) and I wanted to watch my pirated version of The Last Finale tonight, so I can force myself into the weekly fixes as opposed to the daily doses of CM. *Sigh* The withdrawal symptoms are a killer.
Anyway, the reason why I’m not is because my eyes are shutting involuntarily on me and I watched Mythbusters already (which was really, really cool – where else will you see people shooting lightning bolts down streams of water and putting fire extinguishers in the middle of flames to watch them explode and walk over thousand degree coals?) and I’ve just finished my murderous homework and in essence, I’m too exhausted. So Lo-Fi will have to wait for tomorrow. I think I’ll live, though.
Please, eyes, hang in here a bit longer. Thanks.
School’s being okay, even though ODT (still referring to DreamingOfNothing’s Psychotic Teacher, ODT standing for Other Demented Teacher) has set us all to handwriting analysis and declared that I am *actually* very extroverted but am just hell-bent on hiding it. Right, so I’m really a party animal but want people to think I’m a hermit freak. That really makes sense. Thank you for your insight, graphology.
Yeah. It’s all sort of psychosis. But it’s not terrible. I’ll live, I think, even though every person in my class bought that load of nonsense about telling personality from handwriting. To quote Charles Eppes in the first time in far too long, “Was I asleep? Did I miss the memo? When did the whole world throw rational thought out the window?” Whatevs. It’s not the end of the universe.
G’night, y’all. My ears are buzzing… Or is that Pandora? I don’t know. That can’t be a good sign, though.
Wait for me, Lo-Fi. I’ll be by to see you tomorrow.
Until then, I remain,
~DreamingOfNothing
The Memory of Joy
Here I am again, listening to When I’m Gone (3 Doors Down), a song with far too many associations in my head, and copying CM fanfics off of the internet so’s I can read them when I haven’t got an internet connection. Yeah, I have no life, at least not a life I feel interested in participating in at the moment.
One question about Criminal Minds Fanfic: Why is it all slash? What is slash-inducing in this almost shipless show?
Okay, since this is my blog and because I feel like it, I’m listing
Reasons Why I Think That Inter-BAU Slash (or Het) Is A Little Weird:
1. As someone on bau_fic at lj said, it’s almost incest. Seeing as they’re like a big family and all. JJ even says that they’re family, so ha. “You do whatever it takes to protect your family.” The fact that she says this right before the implied Morgan/Garcia ship is (at least temporarily) squished softens the blow some.
2. Reid is cool, yes, but really – does he have to ship with every single character? The only Reid ship I haven’t seen yet is Reid/Garcia, and I’m sure there’s one of those somewhere. As lovable as he may be – why? And he may not be the epitome of masculinity, but that doesn’t make him gay (Allow me to refer you to my post on people judging gayness themselves as well as point out Someone’s Watching, where he kissed a girl, hello).
3. Why are there infinitely more ships that the show has actively discouraged than ones hinted? I mean, Morgan/Garcia was big-ish when it was a possibility, but I think that Kevin Lynch has nailed that one for now. And while I admit that William LaMontane and his marriage proposal drained the last drop of life from the already pretty corpse-like Reid/JJ ship, I haven’t seen that many of those even from before Will showed up. Anyway, he doesn’t seem to be stopping the many JJ/Prentiss slash-shippers, so I don’t know. You can sort of reject CM’s reality and substitute your own, I guess.
It just confuses me, that’s all. I’ve never seen a fandom with non-canon slash in such abundance before. It’s a new experience (but certainly a frustrating one when trying to find genfic. Especially when there really isn’t any).
What I can find seems good, though. The nerdy show gets good fanwriters 
. Even if they do have an obsession with slashing everyone together. It’s probably like the whole Marauder thing – they’re all really close, but not officially related (just sorta honorarily) so people think they’re all in love with each other. It freaks me out, to be honest, but that’s just me.
And hey, I did end up deciding that Sirius/Remus wasn’t that bad, right? As an AU? Who knows? (Though if I wake up someday wanting to write Reid/Gideon fic, after firmly establishing in my ep analysis that the two of them are very father/son, I may be forced to bang my head against the wall several times).
G’night. My sister can’t sleep with my keystrokes.
~DreamingOfNothing
P.S. Coolest quotation ever:
Lord Byron once wrote, “The memory of joy is no longer joy; the memory of pain is pain still.”
Don’t ask.
9-11-01
“What though the radiance that was once so bright, be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.”
Haley, I don’t hate you.
Okay. It’s time for a full-fledged CM self-discussion-thing. I’ve been wanting to do this for the longest time, and as I look at the calendar and mourn the next 16 days I’ve got, I’m going to just bite the bullet and do it.
Therefore note: This post doesn’t have the Criminal Minds tag because I mention how long the wait for the season premiere is. It’s got the tag because that’s all it talks about.
Feel forewarned.
Okay, so who I want to talk about tonight is Haley Hotcher. Otherwise known as the wife of Aaron Hotchner (usually known as Hotch) and generally despised by the fandom because she divorces Hotch in the third season.
Now, my take on Haley is sort of muddled. She broke off the marriage because she and her son (Jack, who’s adorable) never saw Hotch, due to him being off catching serial killers and whatnot. And while I think Hotch is amazing – I know what it’s like to be on the Haley side of it. It’s not fun. Especially when you have something like Hotch does, where even when he’s home, you know that at any second someone can call with a case and ship him off for a few days.
So basically, Haley’s got it worse that I’ve ever had it, and I can’t really be upset with her for getting out of that. I mean, Hotch is a very loving husband and father and an all-round wonderful guy, but Haley and Jack just don’t see much of him. As well-meaning as Hotch may be – Jack is growing up essentially without a father. And Haley’s married to a shadow.
It’s like he’s cheating on her. With his job. Family and Job are the two things most important to him, and with the sort of job he’s got and the amount of guilt it constantly loads on him, there wasn’t any way he could give it up for Haley. And I think she ended up understanding that.
That’s why she left.
That’s not to say that Hotch isn’t still an awesome guy. He is. And he still loves his family. Actually, he said this, “I gave absolutely everything to Haley, and Jack, and my job.” – (other character) So something had to give. – “Yeah. You’re right. But it doesn’t mean that I am any less committed, or try any less hard, for my son.”
Because he isn’t. Just… Haley and Jack need more than second place. They deserve more than second place. And so while I realize that he can’t leave what he does, I also realize that Haley can’t stay with him either. People criticize her for not being supportive – support is exactly what she needs and what Hotch can’t give her.
In summary, as much as I like Hotch and don’t want him to be hurt, I have to give Haley the fact that she’s got it really, really tough. And people say that she’s spoiled and bratty for not being willing to make
the sacrifices to support her husband, but – it’s way harder than it looks. And I can’t find any bit of hate for her anywhere in me.
So even if I am the only person who thinks this, and even if some Hotch-loving want to murder me for it, I needed to get that out. Haley is not a spoiled, self-absorbed jerk. She’s just human.
I’m listening to The Funeral by Band of Horses, who do have a random name and have a song about as freaking sad as it sounds, even though it’s basically instrumental. I’ve just got tear-jerking associations now, due to (yes, you did guess it) Criminal Minds.
~DreamingOfNothing
